Screaming forward in this top 10 search tip extravaganza, here’s #8! I’ll keep this short: I’ve provided these search tips during some recent presentations and they were well-received by the participants. I thought it would be beneficial to post them here. I hope they’re able to help you in your search efforts.
Links - get them.
Top 10 Search Tips – Tip #8 – Links! Imagine a playground where all the children, and even some teachers, are pointing (in a friendly way) at one child. If the principal walked onto this scene, chances are excellent she would take a look where everyone was pointing. While potentially uncomfortable for the child, there’s going to be a lot of eyes on him. The principal might also make a mental note: “Hmm, I’ll have to remember little Billy, that kid’s garnering a lot of attention.”
Think of little Billy as your website, the other children as other websites, the teachers as really popular websites (say www.amazon.com or www.yahoo.com), and the Principal as a search engine. All those pointing fingers are links to your website. The Principal, noticing that even teachers are pointing at Billy, notices Billy much more than if he were just wandering around in a crowd of kids.
Aren’t analogies fun?! No?!
Long story longer: Search Engines pay more respect to websites that have more incoming links from other websites. The more popular the referring website (yahoo, amazon), the bigger the boost to your site. Google calls this Page Rank, Bing calls this Page Score and Yahoo, well, they’re probably keeping the name internal (or will make you pay to learn it’s name).
“So, Mr. SmartyPants, just how exactly do I go about getting links to my site?” I’ll only tell you a few and you can start to understand the myriad ways to get backlinks.
- Search Engines – If you’re a local business, set up your local business listing in each of the search engines. Those backlinks are valuable.
- Yelp.com – Get reviewed on Yelp and make sure your business info is accurate. Bing ranks Yelp highly.
- Yellow Pages – Most Yellow Page companies have a robust web operations group. If you have a Yellow Pages ad, make sure you have your business listed at their .com site. It’s typically a very small amount to add .com listing to an existing ad.
- Friends, Blogs, Friend’s Blogs, Associations, Chambers of Commerce, Partners – You get the picture, wherever you can leave your mark, try to get it there.
One more thing, I need to leave a link: website design and search marketing by Alpine Technical Group
Tags: Search Marketing, Search Marketing Activity, Top Ten Search Marketing Tips